Occasional Papers eBook

The main portion of the book consists of Mr. Robertson’s
own letters, and his own accounts of himself; and
we are allowed to see him, in a great degree at least,
as he really was. The editor draws a moral, indeed,
and tells us what we ought to think about what we see;
but we can use our own judgment about that. And,
as so often happens in real life, what we see both
attracts and repels; it calls forth, successively
and in almost equal measure, warm sympathy and admiration,
and distinct and hearty disagreement. At least
there is nothing of commonplace—­of what
is commonplace yet in our generation; though there
is a good deal that bids fair to become commonplace
in the next. It is the record of a genuine spontaneous
character, seeking its way, its duty, its perfection,
with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, and
many anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not,
without much of the fruits that come with real self-devotion;
a record disclosing a man with great faults and conspicuous
blanks in his nature, one with whose principles, taste,
or judgment we constantly find ourselves having a
vehement quarrel, just after having been charmed and
conciliated by some unexpectedly powerful or refined
statement of an important truth. We cannot think,
and few besides his own friends will think, that he
had laid his hand with so sure an accuracy and with
so much promise upon the clue which others had lost
or bungled over. But there is much to learn in
his thoughts and words, and there is not less to learn
from his life. It is the life of a man who did
not spare himself in fulfilling what he received as
his task, who sacrificed much in order to speak his
message, as he thought, more worthily and to do his
office more effectually, and whose career touches
us the more from the shadow of suffering and early
death that hangs over its aspirations and activity.
A book which fairly shows us such a life is not of
less value because it also shows us much that we regret
and condemn.

Mr. Robertson was brought up not only in the straitest
traditions of the Evangelical school, but in the heat
of its controversial warfare. His heart, when
he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one
of his most characteristic points through life, shown
in many very different forms, was his pugnacity, his
keen perception of the “certaminis gaudia":—­

“There is something of combativeness
in me,” he writes, “which prevents
the whole vigour being drawn out, except when I have
an antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell,
or a wrong to avenge. Never till then does
my mind feel quite alive. Could I have chosen
my own period of the world to have lived in, and my
own type of life, it should be the feudal ages,
and the life of a Cid, the redresser of wrongs.”

“On the other hand,” writes
his biographer, “when he met men who despised
Christianity, or who, like the Roman Catholics, held
to doctrines which he believed untrue, this very